


The Avatar and the Last Airbender

by AlyssiaInWonderland



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Avatar Zuko (Avatar), Gen, Humor, Light Angst, Multi, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27898945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlyssiaInWonderland/pseuds/AlyssiaInWonderland
Summary: Zuko doesn’t want to be taught airbending by some 112 year old child monk, thank you very much! He’s the avatar, he’s banished, and he is dealing with it.(He is not dealing with it)Iroh needs more jasmine tea.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 183





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> NB: This story has regular updates on Saturdays at circa 20:00 GMT, and the occasional spontaneous one at other points! Thanks y'all <3

When the monks asked Aang to act as a decoy, he said yes, immediately.

He was young, and playful, but he already had his master’s tattoos - and he’d earned them with skill and talent that had made him high on the list of potential avatars.

Not to mention it was a chance to go on an outing with Appa, his best friend.

The storm was intense, but Appa held steady. He was supposed to be flying to one of the other air temples, to cover the tracks of the other monk who had picked out the right toys; who was the Avatar. Who was being hunted by the fire nation.

They had become rather turned around in the intense gusts of wind, and he’d heard tales of strange lights in the south, but this was different. A blue streak from ocean to sky, brighter than the lighting or even the sun. Aang shielded his eyes as he stared, fascinated, as the colour flared - and then it headed right towards him. 

“Appa, turn!” Aang yelled, but they weren’t able to bank fast enough.

The streak of light hit them, and they tumbled together into the waves. The light swirled around them, encasing them in ice; protective. With it’s last act to preserve the last airbender complete, the Avatar spirit faded - waiting to be reborn.

* * *

When Hama was born, her bright blue eyes and natural bending capabilities gave their entire community hope. As she grew, so did her power; while she waxed with the moon she even reached beyond waterbending itself. Bloodbending opened its arms to her easily, its power rushing through her like the fire she hated, fire that ran in her veins nonetheless.

She hid it - hid her powers, because what kind of waterbender could let flames lick their arms and not be burned? Despite trying, earth did not come to her, nor did air. She was a half-realised power, terrified that she was neither a bender nor an avatar. She had nobody to teach her, and fire being in her reach simply made her fear of it greater.

One day, the raids came for her.

She snuffed out their fire, and they caught her with metal, killed her without knowing what it meant.

So the Avatar spirit moved on.

* * *

Jin Fong was a beloved daughter to the Captain and his wife.

Too young to develop true bending, but old enough to have already moved the earth to reach her favourite toys. 

They lived near the edges of the Earth Kingdom, garrisoned but relatively safe. Relatively.

Jin died with her mother in a raid on the military housing by fire nation soldiers, while Captain Fong was away on patrol. The Avatar spirit left Captain Fong in the burned ruins of his old home, where he stayed, awake, until morning.

The first letter was for funeral arrangements; the second his promotion. General Fong found joy in neither.

* * *

The Avatar spirit wandered the Fire Nation, pondering what choice to make. The fate of the world would always rest on them, but it weighed more heavily now, with the Fire nation driving balance to such extremes. Who could they possibly choose, to return balance; to keep the nation’s purpose yet bring peace?

In the palace, a tiny baby boy, barely strong enough to survive, began to cry.

The Avatar spirit made their choice.

Zuko opened his golden eyes, and if his mother saw his eyes glow with more than sunlight, she never told a soul.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko heads to the South pole. Nothing to do with maybe being able to escape from his ship and find an unsuspecting waterbender - it's to find the Avatar. Honest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 1 is missing due to being the Prologue. This is Chapter 2 in name and 1 in spirit. I wanted the numbers to match up, sue me!

“How about some tea and a nice game of pai sho, nephew?”

Zuko leapt out of his meditation posture like he’d been stung by a wasp-rat, knocking over a jug of water as he did so.

“Uncle! Why can’t you understand how to knock?” He drew his arms to his sides, trying his best to pretend that he’d been making defensive motions instead of flailing in shock.

“I understand you need your privacy Zuko, but it’s been four hours. Rather than spend the time before dinner brooding, I thought you would benefit from some company.” Iroh spoke with a gentle, infuriating tone.

“I don’t brood!” Zuko snapped, and rolled his eyes. “Fine, I’ll keep you company. I wasted my time meditating, so wasting it on a game doesn’t matter.”

“That’s the positive attitude I like to see!” Iroh grinned, his buoyant mood seemingly never sunk by anything less than the absence of his tea.

Zuko traipsed after his uncle, ignoring the crew. Sometimes, especially when they docked, he felt self-conscious about his scar. Here, though, the soldiers had become used to him and his damage; literally and figuratively. Jee had even tried to involve him in the music nights, undoubtedly at Iroh’s behest.

It was nice, if Zuko let himself forget that he was the reason they were all banished. That he was the reason they’d never return.

_ Find the Avatar and you may return to my side _ .

If only it were that simple.

Zuko had tried to run off more times than he could count. Each time, Iroh or the crew found him, berated him on the dangers of it, and dragged him back like an errant puppy.

He wished he could tell them; yell out the truth so they would hate him and return to the lives they deserved with the honourable fire nation. That he was letting them go on a chase that was bound to lead nowhere, because the Avatar would never be found. Because the Avatar was him.

“Your move, Prince Zuko.” Iroh’s voice cut through Zuko’s morose reflections.

Zuko picked a random tile with a wave carved on it, and made to place it on a square. Iroh’s expression scrunched into a wince, so he quickly withdrew his hand, hovering it over various squares while narrowing his eyes at his uncle, trying to pin down his expression.

He dropped it on a tile that seemed to align with the least abject horror on Iroh’s face, and was rewarded by a sunny smile.

“Why, sometimes you do listen to my lectures on opening gambits!”

“Yes, Uncle.” Zuko didn’t mean to sound sullen; it just came to him naturally.

“You know, the move you chose has its roots in waterbending philosophy.” Iroh’s voice took on the timbre of a lecture, and Zuko concealed a sigh of relief; it was safe to switch off and offer paltry moves when prompted.

Iroh often talked about the way pai sho moves came from all over the world, with each kingdom serving a different role in a balanced play-style. It wasn’t calculated to rub their task or his secret identity in; it couldn’t be. It stung anyway.

Besides, Zuko hadn’t been able to bend anything but fire since the day he got his scar. He was an abject failure; of course he wouldn’t be able to bring balance to the world - he could barely pay attention long enough to balance a simple board game.

“Our course is getting colder.” Iroh commented, casually moving his white lotus to the centre of the board. His casual poise signalled to Zuko that their game was coming to a close, victory resting as always with his Uncle.

“I thought it time we pay the Southern Water Tribes a visit.” Zuko said, his tone firm.

“An interesting gambit.”   
  
“Water follows air in the Avatar cycle.” He explained, quickly. His eyes darted around, searching for suspicion. The crew and Iroh took his fear for capricious royal temperament, luckily for him. He’d always been a terrible liar.

“The North is better known for turning out masters.” Iroh pointed out, good natured over reprimanding.

“Their defences are impregnable, according to Zhao. We might get lucky.”

“Yes,” Iroh mused, his expression taking on that far away look Zuko assumed was the standard for old men who liked to stare into the past as much as the horizon. “We might.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Boy in the Iceberg - airbender remix! We meet Katara, Sokka and Aang - and of course Appa!

When Aang woke up, the first thing he experienced was a crushing, bone-deep sensation of cold. The second thing was opening his eyes to a concerned, beautiful girl with blue eyes. The third was the sledgehammer of memory, and he airbent himself upright in alarm, accidentally pushing the girl away as he scrambled up the strange icy mountain behind him.

“Appa?” He reached the top of the ice and fell lightly into the dip, relief flooding through him at seeing his favourite sky-bison resting there, shaggy and warm. Aang could hear a conversation outside, muted by the walls of ice around them. 

“Woah!” He ran his hand over the smooth, glassy sphere around them. The ice was almost clear; translucent, shaded with a deeply familiar blue. “I knew the Avatar was powerful, but this is something else! We must have made it out of the storm easily in this!” Aang frowned, letting himself collapse cross-legged onto Appa’s somewhat damp saddle. “I hope they’re okay. It didn’t look like they - I mean, the light could have meant anything, right, Appa?”

Appa huffed, the sound reminiscent of a glacier gurgling in the springtime thaw.

“You’re right, buddy. We can just ask them!” Aang brightened, and leveraged his glider to break a triangle of ice away, sending it crashing into the ocean. It missed the two water tribe kids who had found him by a hair’s breadth. “Oops. Sorry!”

“Sorry?” The older one, a warrior holding a boomerang, loomed forward, brandishing the weapon angrily. “You nearly killed us! First you’re hanging around in an iceberg, which is weird enough, and now this? Could this day get any weirder?”

“Sokka, calm down!” The girl grabbed his arm, and tugged him backwards. “I’m sorry about him,” She said to Aang, overly loudly. “He doesn’t know basic manners.”

“Basic manners? I’m pretty sure basic manners include  _ not nearly killing us with ice _ !”

“I said I was sorry!” Aang protested, and cringed back from Sokka’s glare.

“You benders are all the same - power this, harmony that, time to go do something stupid an dangerous!” Sokka ranted, gripping his boomerang so loosely as he gesticulated that Aang worried that he’d accidentally attack.

“Sokka!” The girl admonished, and shoved him aside, holding out a mittened hand to Aang. “I’m Katara. This oaf’s sister.” She smiled.

“That’s  _ little _ sister, you know!” Sokka heckled, but his tone was becoming less angry and more exasperated-teasing by the second.

“Hey Katara! Hi Sokka! I’m Aang. Thanks for helping me out of the iceberg.” He grinned, and Katara flushed, looking away, embarrassed.

“It’s nothing, really. I had no idea, I just kind of accidentally broke your ice-blob.”

“Well, it was a very fortunate accident! I had no idea how to get out of there. It’s just lucky it didn’t break in the storm.” Aang shook Katara’s hand, enthusiastically, and then leapt aside to grab Sokka’s. Sokka shrugged him off, but he didn’t threaten him, which was, in fact, progress. He supposed it would be rather surprising to find someone in an iceberg.

“Storm?” Sokka blinked, seeming confused. “But there hasn’t been a storm for-”

“Yeah! It was not pretty - well, it was, but it was definitely not a safe kind of pretty.” Aang explained. “Sokka, Katara, this is probably a strange question-”

“No stranger than you are, buddy.” Sokka snorted, laughing at himself. Katara and Aang ignored him.

“What is it, Aang?” She asked.

“Where exactly are we?” Aang scratched the back of his head sheepishly.

“We’re at-” Sokka cut her off, seeming suspicious again.   
  
“Hey! Katara, you can’t tell him! Just because he’s not an immediate threat doesn’t mean he’s not a spy!”

“Oh sure, Sokka, it’s Aang, the waterbending child-spy! Whatever will the villains think of next? Armoured kitten-puppies?” Katara returned, her hands on her hips, eyebrows raised challengingly.

“I’m just saying! There’s definitely more going on than we understand, here.”

“He’s a waterbender, Sokka!”

“Well, actually-” Aang interjected, but was brush aside.

“He was stuck in an iceberg! You’re looking for a master to train you, and some waterbender just turns up, wearing weird clothes that aren’t exactly water tribe, and he doesn’t know where he is! Doesn’t that strike you as a little too coincidental?”

“Actually-” Aang repeated, raising a hand. They ignored him, caught up in their sibling bickering.

“Oh yeah, I’m sure this is all part of some master plan! Come on, Sokka. Waterbenders don’t work for the-”

Katara was cut off by Appa’s growling yawn. It was so loud they could hear echoes of it ringing between their ice floe and the glacier that fed it. Sokka and Katara stared at the enormous, fluffy cloud of threat. 

Aang patted the giant creature on the nose, gratefully.

“Thanks, Appa.” He turned to them, and grinned, widely. “I was trying to tell you - I’m not a waterbender! I’m an airbender! And this is Appa, my flying sky-bison!”

Katara and Sokka looked at each other, then back at Aang and Appa.

Sokka took the hit, and broke the silence.

“And this is Katara, my flying sister!”

“I’m fairly sure Katara can’t fly. Unless-” Aang paused, blinking at the mismatch of information. “How could you be the Avatar? They only just left - you’re not a baby, are you?” He pointed at Katara, unintentionally accusatory.

“The Avatar?” Katara was staring at him with extreme worry, as if he’d hit his head and forgotten some basic truth about the world.

“Aang, the Avatar has been gone for a hundred years.” Sokka filled in, with exposition that made absolutely no sense.

“A hundred years?” Aang yelped, stumbling back into Appa. He clung to the fur behind his back, desperately trying to process. “You’re kidding, right? I was just there, in the storm, a few moments ago!” He looked to Katara, desperately hoping Sokka was playing a harsh prank because of his distrust.

She shook her head at him. “He’s right, Aang. The Avatar vanished, and immediately after that - the fire nation attacked the rest of the world. Starting with-” She broke off, horrified. 

“I can’t believe this day has gotten even weirder. I think I’m cursed.” Sokka spoke half to the sky itself. “My sister is a waterbending freak, and she manages to find a hundred-year-old baby airbender on a fishing trip. We didn’t even get any fish!” He lamented.

“Oh, and whose fault is it that we don’t have any fish!” Katara rounded on her brother instantly, familial rage a visceral distraction from wrestling with how to break the news to a temporally-displaced airbender about the loss of his entire culture. 

“Yours.” Sokka declared, confidently. “You distracted me with your bending, we’ve been through this!” He stopped abruptly. “I mean, my fault. Actually. My fault.”

“Wait, you’re admitting you were wrong?”

“Well, earlier this argument made you unearth him and break our boat. I just don’t want you accidentally breaking out an earthbender next time you get grumpy.”

“Excuse me, what do you mean I broke our boat? That was your fault and you know it!”

Aang let the continued bickering wash past him. A hundred years. Even if the Avatar he’d known had managed to survive the storm, they’d be dead by now. He hadn’t wanted to admit just how final the blue light had been; how much it had felt like a goodbye. Then he’d decided that Katara must be the new Avatar - weirdly old, but it would have made sense, in a way - that the new Avatar might only be able to wake him once they’d become fully realised.

Instead, the Avatar was just gone. Replaced by a world where he’d been woken by accident, a hundred years too late to help anyone. Where the fire nation had attacked the world, because the Avatar had been destroyed despite his role as bait.

Did he even know for sure that the Avatar was in the water tribe? What if the cycle had continued unnoticed; or been broken completely? Who could he even consult about it? Everyone he’d known at the air temples must be gone by now, even the kids he’d known. He couldn’t just turn up without an Avatar, when he’d been sent away to protect them. No, Aang decided, resolutely ignoring the looming reality of an air temple that held nobody he knew. He couldn’t go back to the air temples - not just yet. 

First, he had to find the Avatar.

And he’d need help to do it.

“Hey!” He shouted, drawing the attention of the siblings engrossed in their fighting. “Since you’ve lost your boat, Appa and I could give you a lift home?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously, Katara hatched an iceberg. This episode, Zuko hatches a plan to find a waterbender - because they might be the Avatar! Not for any other reason, like finding a teacher. No Sir. No way. 
> 
> It may or may not work.

It was harder to find a village in an icefield than Zuko had anticipated.

The crew was hurrying around the upper deck, making themselves ready to turn at a moments notice should they prowl directly into an iceberg that was tougher than their ship. Iroh was settled to the side of the main cabin entrance, drinking tea peaceably. Zuko was scanning the horizon with his good eye, until Captain Jee approached him.

“It’s impossible to tell where the villages might be, Prince Zuko. I’ve seen nothing all day.”

“There has to be some sign!” Zuko snapped, irritated by the defeatist attitude, for all that Iroh’s optimism was equally aggravating. “People don’t just leave no evidence that they exist.”

“This is their land. I’m surprised they’ve not already attacked.” Commented Jee, clearly trying to cement the idea of danger in Zuko’s head.

But the words sparked an idea.

“If we can’t go to them,” Zuko mused, a smile forming with his plan. “Then we have to make them come to us.”

“Prince?” Captain Jee eyed him, and the look in his eyes remind Zuko of how his father sometimes looked at Azula after a particularly complex set of katas. 

He shrugged off the memory, and elaborated, more harshly than he’d meant to.

“Send up a distress signal, and make yourselves ready.” Zuko declared, confidently. “We’re about to be boarded by the Southern Water Tribes.”

* * *

“Waiting is always the worst part of a siege.” Iroh’s dry commentary only served to infuriate Zuko further.

“It’s nearly midnight! We’ve sent up enough flares that we’d risk when we’re in actual distress if we sent more! How can they just abandon a ship - don’t they have any honour?” Zuko’s temper flared bright, even though his inner fire was muted by the sunset.

“Our nation has spent years in a war of attrition with the Southern Water Tribes, Zuko. It is not surprising that they are conflicted.”

“I - I guess so.” Zuko conceded the point reluctantly. “I’m not good at waiting, Uncle.”

“I know.” Iroh chuckled, the warmth in his tone almost soothing the sting of his admission. “You are a man of action. But the leaf will fall with the seasons, not the wind.”

“Is that even a real proverb?”

“I’m old, and I said it, so it must be.” He quirked his eyebrow, and Zuko snorted in amusement.

It had taken him a long time to come to terms with the humour his Uncle displayed. All too often, in the past, he’d noticed something funny only to be told it was inappropriate - or else failed entirely to notice the cue that something was supposed to be amusing. Azula constantly told him that he was too dense to understand royal conversation and society. The interactions with Iroh, and looking back also with Lu Ten, had always been laden with a mirth that the rest of his family lacked. He couldn’t remember if his mother had been the same as him or the other courtiers, but he liked to think perhaps she was the best of both.

It wasn’t cruel, or subtle - or if it was indirect, it was in such a way that Zuko could identify it when he cared to. Instead of being laughed at, he could laugh with his Uncle - in tiny shared glances when phrases turned into dual dao that his father and grandfather always dismissed. Truth was always there behind the words, rather than the twisting lies that Ozai loved like bending itself.

Zuko had by no means mastered the art himself; sarcasm threw him off frequently, and his obliviousness to teasing, fond or not, had been palace legend once upon a time. But there was a secret language in the jokes of his Uncle and cousin. A secret language that for once, he was party to. He didn’t understand why it was so much easier to communicate with Iroh than his closer family, but he didn’t need to. There was a familiarity that coated the edges of a deeper feeling, one he hardly dared to inspect for fear of breaking it. In those shared moments, he felt like he was on the edge of a precipice, and he almost wanted to fall.

“You realise that entire trees are ripped up at the root by hurricanes, don’t you? What lesson is there in that?”

“Ah.” Iroh nodded, sagely, and Zuko ached with the feeling of being included. “The lesson there is never to cling too hard to your soil. It is better to lose the leaves you once held than to lose yourself.”

“Huh. That almost sounded plausible.” Zuko smirked, and Iroh frowned at him, his expression just enough of a mockery of annoyance that he was not scared by it.

“Why must you hurt your old Uncle so? I share my wisdom and it is ignored. The younger generation,” Iroh turned to a perplexed Captain Jee, shaking his head. “They have no respect.”

“I’m - sorry, General.” Captain Jee said, awkwardly. He was eyeing Zuko with the suspicion reserved for whenever he seemed too happy. Zuko understood - he could be harsh, and not many people seemed to actually realise that he and his Uncle were not actually arguing.

“Did you need something?” He asked, his tone becoming sharp enough that Iroh winced in sympathy for Zuko’s internal cringe at his accidental manner.

“I wanted to know if we should set off another flare.” He said, bowing slightly. Zuko sighed internally, returning the bow, knowing that he was the one who had trapped them in formalities by being so blunt.

“We shouldn’t waste any more resources on the Water Tribes. We can’t guarantee these people understand honour. Perhaps they won’t come. Or perhaps they are waiting for us to weaken ourselves in peril before engaging.”

“Our last flare burned out several degrees ago. I doubt they even could find us, now.”

“I see.”

“It was a good plan, nephew.” Iroh laid a hand on Zuko’s shoulder, consolingly. Zuko prepared to give the order to resume their travels.

And that was when a giant cloud fell out of the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will likely be an update next week but if not, have a good break & stay safe y'all <3

**Author's Note:**

> Heya! I hope this is enjoyable. Still a WIP but I'm excited about it!


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